Unheralded heroes

Injured Indian soldiers of the British Army at the Brighton Pavilion, converted into a military hospital, 1915. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Wounded Indian soldiers in Brighton

It was one of the happy ideas of the war - due, it is said, to the suggestion of the king - to house the wounded Indian soldiers in the Brighton Pavilion. That product of the bizarre imagination of King George the Fourth, after the interval of a century, played a really useful part in making our eastern soldiers feel at home. No one who ever visited the pavilion while it was an Indian hospital will forget the strange look of those huge saloons, with their faded oriental decorations in gilt, crimson and looking-glass, full of dark men from all the Indian races recovering from their wounds got on the fields of France. It was the most eerily foreign scene to be found in England.

It is months since the Indians left Brighton, but their sojourn there is not to go without memorial. The lonely piece of land high on the downs, where the bodies of Sikhs and Hindu soldiers who died in hospital were buried with ceremonious rites, was bought recently by the Brighton town council. Their intention was to put up a memorial there.

A movement is now afoot, supported by many prominent Indians in this country and in India, for erecting a monument in the town of Brighton in commemoration of the coming of the Indians to fight for the empire in Europe, and also in recognition of the hospitality of Brighton people to many thousands of wounded Indians who were honoured guests in their town. The Maharajah of Patiala has given a thousand pounds to the fund. The memorial may be in the form of a chatra - an umbrella-shaped monument.Manchester Guardian, Sept 28 1916

Brighton Pavilion. Photo: Getty Images

During the first world war, more than 1.5 million Indian army soldiers saw active service alongside British troops. Some 12,000 Indian soldiers who were wounded on the western front were hospitalised at sites around Brighton. These included York Place school, the Dome, the Corn Exchange and the Royal Pavilion. The 53 Hindu and Sikh soldiers who died in Brighton were taken to a peaceful resting place on the Sussex Downs near Patcham for cremation, after which their ashes were scattered in the sea, in accordance with their religious rites. The Muslim brothers in arms, totalling 19, were buried in a purpose-built burial ground near to the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking. Extract from chattri.com, the official website of Brighton's memorial to the Indian soldiers.

A tragic loss near the Isle of Wight

Britain and South Africa are holding modest ceremonies today to mark the 90th anniversary of a tragedy which few Britons know about, but which happened early on the morning of February 21 1917, in cold, submarine-menaced waters 10 miles south of the Isle of Wight. It is also part of a process, sad but healthy, whereby peoples and aspiring nations who were assigned bit parts in the convulsive wars which engulfed - and destroyed - European empires in the 20th century, have reassessed and reasserted their own contributions and found them more significant than they had been told.

The sinking of the SS Mendi with the loss of more than 600 black South African lives (nine South African whites and 33 crew were also lost, with 200 saved) was not, in fact, an act of war by the imperial German navy. The ship, carrying members of the South African Native Labour Corps - many of them volunteers, others volunteered by their chiefs - to serve in lowly capacities on the western front in the first world war, was hit at full speed by another allied steamship, the SS Darro.

Many victims died below deck. But the story persists that a charismatic clergyman in the group, the Rev Isaac William Wauchope, persuaded the rural tribesmen dying far from home to join in the traditional dance of death on the sinking deck. That is why it is remembered. "Let Us Die Like Brothers" - Wauchope's words - is the name of a documentary made to mark the event which has gained belated status in post-apartheid South Africa's conscious process of nation-building.

In 1917 the captain of the SS Darro did not stop to pick up survivors of the Mendi. Whether it was a racist act or fear of submarine attack has been debated ever since. He was punished with only a brief one-year suspension. But when news of the tragedy reached Cape Town all members of the South African parliament's House of Assembly stood in silence with bowed heads and telegrams were dispatched to local magistrates. In that proto-apartheid era, communication with families at local level was woeful.

But names of the Mendi's dead were included on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Hollybrook memorial in Southampton, though it was not until 1986 that they were added to South Africa's national memorial to the fallen at Delville Wood in Flanders.Extract from report by Michael White, the Guardian, Feb 21 2007